It's actually a new filesystem for flash storage, which is cheap storage that does not have a controller to do wear leveling and other things. SSDs have firmware that are optimized for traditional filesystems such as ext4.

I seem to remember the imputus for this stupid technology was that a Mozilla researcher was about to make available some technology that either blocked tracking cookies or made them relatively anonymous, but then Google and others stepped in and stopped it, and came up with this easily ignorable solution instead. Has anyone else heard of this or am I making it up? Since the story first broke I haven't been able to find any references to it.

This page is using the term "multitouch" a full year earlier. And even if Apple were the first to use the term, they didn't trademark it before it became a more generic term, used on synaptics touchpads as mentioned.

blitzkrieg3 writes: Classrooms all around the country are being fitted with one to one laptop programs, networking hardware, digital projectors, and other technology in order to stay competitive in the 21st century. Kyrene school district spent $3 million modernizing their classrooms. The problem? The increase in spending doesn't lead to an increase in test scores. Policy makers calling for high tech classrooms, including former execs from HP, Apple, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, want to increase technology investment despite the results. Others are not so sure, or think it is an outright waste of money.Link to Original Source

Full Disclosure: I work for Red Hat, but these opinions are my own and not representative of RHT.

The Kernel is the only thing in there that ISN'T from RedHat

This is wildly misleading. Almost everything Red Hat ships in Enterprise Linux is not from Red Hat. Projects like GCC, RPM package manager, Gnome, Glibc, KDE are all too big for Red Hat to develop on its own. The only things I can think of that are completely from Red Hat are layered products like Directory Server or projects where Red Hat has maintainership and majority contributions, like NetworkManager.

Having said that, I can't think of a kernel contribution report in recent years where Red Hat was not #1.

Apparently to call it a "new" kernel TFA feels they should have started entirely from scratch.

To call it a "new" kernel it has to be something less than nine months old.

*) semtimedop optimizations. I posted these to the list a while ago, and Manfred took things in a less complex direction. He was waiting for me to fully benchmark the less complex version, but we ran out of time in the release cycle and had to focus on other things. Oracle hammers on the IPC lock, so these made a big difference, and now I finally have time to properly benchmark his approach against mine.

*) Ocfs2
*) Small lock contention fixes
*) Receive packet steering
*) A large update to RDS (this is in a different package)
*) A patch to list msi irqs for each device in sysfs. A modified irqbalance uses this to keep irqs on numa local cpus.

There are other bits and pieces, but we resisted the urge to pile things in.

The solid state disk access number came on a huge machine, and the improvements came from getting rid a lock in the driver and enabling it for softirq affinity code without taking any of the request locks.

Over the next 12 months we'll be getting an update prepared to a new mainline version, and trying to hammer on upstream kernels as much as we can to reduce our patch count even more.

msmoriarty writes: The New York Post is reporting this morning that Novell has a "deal in principle" to sell itself to two different buyers. From the article: "A strategic buyer will buy the piece of the software provider that develops and delivers Linux SUSE systems, with a private-equity firm picking up much of the rest.Both deals are expected to close simultaneously and the company will be de-listed,"...according to an anonymous source.

Posted
by
samzenpuson Friday August 06, 2010 @01:51PM
from the 35-miles-per-burrito dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that Volkswagen is giving new meaning to the term 'Dung Beetle' with a prototype able to cover 10,000 miles annually on the waste from 70 households. The Bio-Bug was launched by Wessex Water, which is generating methane from human waste at a sewage treatment works near Bristol. 'Our site has been producing biogas for many years, which we use to generate electricity to power the site and export to the National Grid,' says one company official. 'We decided to power a vehicle on the gas, offering a sustainable alternative to using fossil fuels which we so heavily rely on in the UK.' The Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association says the launch of the Bio-Bug proves that biomethane from sewage sludge can be used as fuel. 'This is a very exciting and forward-thinking project demonstrating the myriad benefits of anaerobic digestion (releasing energy from waste). Biomethane cars could be just as important as electric cars.'"

blitzkrieg3 writes: Plan Ceibal is providing 90,000 laptops for Paraguayan High School students to use. The XO-HS will provide 2x the processing power, 4x the memory, and 4x the persistent storage (flash). Though based on the currently shipping XO 1.5, it will have a larger keyboard, and will dual boot Gnome along with the more educational focused Sugar. Unfortunately there are no pictures. The BBC has a more thorough writeup.Link to Original Source

Posted
by
kdawsonon Friday June 04, 2010 @10:46AM
from the small-wonder dept.

metasonix writes "While the rest of the industry has been babbling on about the iPad and imitations thereof, Qi Hardware is actually shipping a product that is completely open source and copyleft. Linux News reviews the Ben NanoNote (product page), a handheld computer apparently containing no proprietary technology. It uses a 366 MHz MIPS processor, 32MB RAM, 2 GB flash, a 320x240-pixel color display, and a Qwerty keyboard. No network is built in, though it is said to accept SD-card Wi-Fi or USB Ethernet adapters. Included is a very simple Linux OS based on the OpenWrt distro installed in Linksys routers, with Busybox GUI. It's apparently intended primarily for hardware and software hackers, not as a general-audience handheld. The price is right, though: $99."

I was just talking about this with my friend yesterday. She said that someone on the bus just looks over at a woman on her cell phone, and that another rider gave her the dirtiest look until he spoke up and said, 'please put away your cell phone'
My friend thought the guy was rude, but I thought he was justified. Cell phones seriously irritate me. That's one good thing about riding the subway.